Siewert Lindenbergh will be appointed Attorney General at the Supreme Court on 1 November 2021, after almost 16 years of full-time employment as a professor of private law at Erasmus School of Law. He will hold a small appointment as professor, in which he will focus mainly on supervising his PhD students for the time being.
The Council of Ministers has approved the proposed appointment of Professor Siewert Lindenbergh as Advocate-General at the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, civil section on 4 June 2021. Lindenbergh, who will take up this position as of 1 November 2021, will remain associated with Erasmus School of Law, where he has worked as Professor of Private Law since 2005, within the civil law department.
Dean of Erasmus School of Law, Professor Suzan Stoter, responds to the forthcoming appointment of Siewert Lindenbergh: ‘The Board wholeheartedly congratulate Siewert on this honourable appointment. I would like to thank him for the high-quality education and research that he has delivered at Erasmus School of Law for over fifteen years and the academic leadership he has demonstrated in this. I am grateful to Siewert for his crucial contribution to the development of the School in a special period, not only in education and research but certainly also administratively as head of the private law department, as chair of the Examination Board and as member of various important committees. I am happy that he will continue to be associated with Erasmus School of Law, be it in a part-time position.’
Successor for Siewert Lindenbergh's academic leadership
Following the appointment of Siewert Lindenbergh as Advocate-General as of 1 November 2021, Professor Harriët Schelhaas will take over the leadership of the private law department, for which she will, of course, receive the necessary assistance. She will combine this position with her position as Vice Dean Bachelor Programmes at Erasmus School of Law. Under the leadership of Professor Schelhaas, the department’s research and education will continue along the core themes of private law, with a clear connection to the Rotterdam credo “Where law meets business”.
With the Board's explicit support, Harriët Schelhaas aims to develop young research talent in the coming years. This development already commenced by the recent appointment of Kasper Jansen as Professor of European Liability Law and will continue in the further positioning of among other Dr Koen Swinnen in property law and of Dr Marnix Hebly in liability law. These staff members will all take their own personal approach to support Harriët Schelhaas in her academic leadership of the department.
About Siewert Lindenbergh
Siewert Lindenbergh has largely published on liability and damages, including personal injury, non-pecuniary loss, compensation of victims of crime, employer’s liability and assessment of damages. In addition to his university position, he is Deputy Judge at the superior court of Arnhem-Leeuwarden. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee that advised the Justice Department on the compensation system for victims of criminal offences and of the Board of the Compensation Fund for Violent Crimes, as well as Chair of the committee that designed the Compensation Scheme for sexually abused minors in the Roman Catholic church. Prior to his appointment in Rotterdam in 2005, Lindenbergh was an assistant professor from 1991 and an associate professor from 1998 at Leiden University, where he obtained a cum laude PhD, also in 1998, for his thesis on non-pecuniary loss. A more detailed overview of his activities can be found here.
About the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands is the highest court of justice in the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius in civil, criminal and tax cases. As court of cassation, the Supreme Court judges whether a court of fact (district court/court of appeal) has applied the law correctly and/or whether it has motivated its decision adequately.
About the profile of Advocate-General
The Advocate-General forms part of the Procurator General’s office at the Supreme Court, which is led by the Procurator-General (as of 1 September this year, that will be colleague professor at Erasmus School of Law Professor Edwin Bleichrodt, who was recently appointed to the position). The Advocate-General is mainly tasked with providing the Supreme Court with advisory opinions before the Supreme Court makes its ruling. He is supported in preparing conclusions by employees from the Supreme Court’s Research Department.
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For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Communications Officer at Erasmus School of Law: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl and mobile: +31 6 53 641 846.